What would a war policy "about us" look like? First, as a matter of national security, it would call for energy independence. It also would be designed to keep jihad out of the West, and emphatically not to bring democracy to lands of jihad. Such a mission would necessarily engage the military in the Middle East, destroying or neutralizing myriad Islamic threats, from Iran to Al Qaeda, from Syria to Hezbollah. Maybe what I envision darkly doesn't sound like the kind of "limited war" the West has exclusively waged for a half century. But it doesn't sound like the kind of "limited war" the West has fought without definable end for half a century, either. And here I'm thinking back to Korea, the very first "limited war" fought to stalemate, not victory, by the last total warrior, Douglas MacArthur -- at least until President Truman fired him for the general's not wanting to fight to stalemate.
Since I began reading William Manchester's biography of Douglas MacArthur, I've been wondering what the famed general would say about today's plight. In a 1951 newspaper interview, MacArthur described his multinational (mainly American, of course) forces in Korea as being "circumscribed by a web of artificial conditions ... in a war without a definite objective. ... The situation would be ludicrous if men's lives were not involved."
It all sounds alarmingly familiar. And what was achieved in this limited war? Roughly 54,000 American servicemen dead for stalemate. Fifty-odd years later, we still have stalemate, and we still have American troops in South Korea (incredible) arrayed against Kim Jong Il, son of North Korean war leader, Kim Il Sung. Now we have NoKo nukes there, as well. Which should make us think hard: What will a limited, ill-defined war on terror look like ... in 50 years?